"I don't know why I should worry so much about your good opinion," I said, trying to strike a light note. "If I were you, I wouldn't even think about it. I'm usually frank with people. Too frank, as you will remember. I expect others to be the same. I usually expect too much. I'm usually disappointed. I'm getting used to it." I found myself becoming annoyed at her attitude. "It would be nice for you to get used to it. It would make it easier to be the only perfect person--surrounded by all the rest of us." "What do you think you--" "I think you sounded pretty stuffy. That's all. You make a lot of virtuous noise. And you condemn me without knowing the score." "You don't seem exactly eager to tell me the score." We stood glaring at each other. It suddenly tickled her sense of the ridiculous. I saw her struggle to keep from smiling. Just then a man came up to us. He was young, with a thin face and heavy horn-rimmed glasses. "Hello, Allan," Ruth said. "Allan, this is Tal Howard, Allan Peary." We shook hands and he said, "Ruthie, I just heard they're going to appoint me to straighten out George's estate. What there is left of it. Do you happen to know what happened to the household effects when he sold to Syler?" "He sold everything, Allan." Allan Peary shook his head. "I don't know where the money went. I've been in touch with the bank. There's only three accounts open. The lumberyard and the store and his personal account. And damn little money in any of them. You're about the only one of his old friends who saw much of him, Ruth. Where did it all go? He liquidated an awful lot of stuff in the past year. What the hell was he doing? Playing the market? Gambling? Women? Drugs?" "He was drinking it up, I guess." "Oh, sure," Allan said. "I know what Syler paid for the house. I know what he got when he sold the lease on Delaware Street. I know what he got for the cement trucks. If he didn't touch anything but Napoleon brandy at twenty-five bucks a bottle, he'd have to drink a thousand bucks a week worth to go through that money." "Maybe it's in some other account, Allan." "I doubt it." He looked at me uneasily and said, "I don't want to talk out of school, but he had a big tab at Stump's. He was behind on the room at the hotel. And I heard last week that Sid Forrester had a sixty-day exclusive listing on the lumberyard and had an interested customer lined up. That was the only thing George had left that was making any money." "Maybe when you go over his accounts you can find what he wrote checks for, Allan." "That isn't going to work, either. He wrote checks for cash and cashed them at the bank. Amounts ranging from five hundred to two thousand." Ruth frowned. "He didn't seem worried about money." "I've tried to talk to him a few times. He didn't seem worried about anything. He didn't seem to give a damn about anything. He almost seemed to be enjoying some big joke--on himself."